Category: Historical research
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A Change is as Good as a Rest?
This week has been rather different to normal. Foolishly, at 8am on Monday morning I was at Preston station in the hope of travelling to London, but the storm rather got in the way. Instead of arriving in London at 10, it was lunchtime when I got there, so I missed a few hours’ work…
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The Way Through the Woods
Yesterday I met my supervisors to Discuss the Chapter. I took a list of questions and comments, a piece of work on some manuscript miscellanies that I’ve been studying and some examples of ballads that fitted some of the categories I’d been working on. Between us, I think we’ve managed to find an approach that…
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The Bog – Part 2
You may have noticed that there wasn’t a blog post on Friday evening. Nor was there one the Friday before. There reason was that I didn’t feel like it; I didn’t want to acknowledge in public that I’m still stuck in the bog, probably waist rather than ankle-deep now. In fact, if truth be told,…
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The bog.
I’m stuck in a bog. Or at least, that’s how my work feels. It went overnight from ideas coming out of my ears to being trapped in icky-sticky mud that won’t release its grip on my feet and let me move. I’m not sure how it happened. One day everything was chugging along as normal…
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More planning
I’ve spent most of this week writing my common weal chapter and despite my misgivings about how much I would get for it, I’ve actually written about 4200 words. Last Sunday I spent the afternoon at my kitchen table, cutting 4 different versions of the same ballad into little pieces and sticking them back together…
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The Common Weal
This is the first time since I started back at work that I’ve really felt like I’m back at work. I’ve begun work on my fifth chapter, ballads and the common weal. But it’s been a funny sort of week. I spent Monday with my head stuck in my source material, trying to find the…
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Summer goals: the final score
The results of my summer goals: • Definition of ‘ballad’ for introduction. I’m part way through this, although it needs a LOT more work. I’m discussing it with friends that I met at the Psalm Culture conference in London in July and I’ve given it a lot of thought, but so far, there’s only a…
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Transcribing and Broadcasting
I went back to work on Wednesday, when my children went back to school. Most of my work this week has been on transcriptions of manscripts from the British Library but I’ve also read some secondary material. I’ve carried on working today, because despite my intentions to spend three whole days immersed in my primary…
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Oxford Archives
On Monday I did a day’s work on manuscripts held in the Bodleian Library. Particularly, of course, Ashmole 48 – Richard Sheale’s ballad collection. There is some dispute over the purpose of the collection. Sheale is known to have been a minstrel attached to the Stanley family, but interpretations over the years have described Ashmole…
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Summer goals update
I thought I’d give you a quick update on my progress towards my summer goals: • Definition of ‘ballad’ for introduction. I’m part way through this, although it needs a LOT more work. I’m discussing it with friends that I met at the Psalm Culture conference in London in July and I’ve given it a…
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